Are Canadian Courts Fit For Purpose? With the Cowichan Tribes v Canada (Attorney General), 2025 BCSC 1490 (CanLII) decision, the British Columbia Supreme Court cast aside nearly a millennium of certainty regarding land ownership. It did this by severely limiting the rights inherent to fee simple title. It additionally declared invalid land titles under the…
Is it Time to Rethink Judicial Appointments? Though Canada lacks a legal tradition of transparency or of timely resolving matters on the merits (unlike in the US or many European nations), has an ill-functioning judicial system that its leading jurists acknowledge to be broken, and (with bail being the rule rather than the exception) is…
Should Canada’s Jews be Arming Themselves? Prior to October 7th, few Canadians had serious reason to fear for their personal safety in the land of Peace, Order and Good Government. While the crime rate had risen above the overall US rate, the homicide rate remained much lower and sensational mass casualty events were much more…
How to Get the Most out of an Initial Consultation with a Lawyer How to Get the Most out of an Initial Consultation with a Lawyer If you’re contemplating legal action, have been sued, are unsure of your legal standing in a particular situation, or need advice on an issue that has potential legal ramifications,…
How to Protect Yourself During Construction/Renovations Construction and renovation expenses can be substantial, often in excess of $100,000.00. While many projects go smoothly, others do not. Contractors (or subcontractors) can fail to build to specification, damage other property, fail to finish work or produce defective work. After a payment dispute, property may be liened and…
How To Prepare an Electronic Civil Motion Record with Exhibits, Bookmarks & Intra-Document Hyperlinks in PDF Format A PDF record with the above characteristics can be assembled via the following steps (without an Acrobat subscription): Depending upon the size of the resulting file (which typically depends to large extent upon whether any attachments are color…
Litigation Authorized to Continue Remotely Although operating to only a limited extent, our courts are surprising well equipped (procedurally) for most litigation to continue remotely. For instance, with regards to Discoveries: “[E]xaminations of witnesses by video conferencing are a normal process in modern international litigation as opined by Neubold J. in Midland, and even more…
How to Prove The Value of Your Claim – Damages in Ontario Greatly simplified, many legal claims come down to two concepts, liability (responsibility) and damages. Liability is generally focused upon how the event occurred, and whether someone else is legally responsible (for any resulting loss). Examples include who was responsible for causing an accident,…
Is it worth it to hire a lawyer to help with an Ontario Small Claims Matter? Frequently, I am contacted by potential clients who are seeking to hire me to represent them in small claims matters. While I am of course happy to represent them throughout, in most cases, I tell them it makes financial…
Legal Malpractice in Real Estate Transactions – Not a Simple Matter Recently, in Bielanski v. Mundenchira, 2019 ONSC 1162 (CanLII), the Court addressed the issue of solicitor’s negligence (legal malpractice) arising out of a real estate transaction. In that case, issues arose after the initial owner (Bielanski) sought to divide his Mississauga property into two…
